Carts are used to transport items in commercial establishments, such as groceries in supermarkets and luggage in airports. Customers place their items into such carts in order to transport the items to their parked vehicle or other destinations. When customers are done with the carts, the carts are often placed in remote collection areas or simply left unattended. Customers often do not return the carts to a central collection area, so these carts must be manually returned to the central collection area. Various attempts have been made to persuade customers to return carts, but the majority of carts remain unreturned. In addition, it is also necessary to move carts from one collection area to another, so as to keep an even distribution of carts for later rentals.
The collection of such carts can be expensive from both a labor and time standpoint. Typically, these hand-pushed carts nest within one another from front to rear. A long-nested string of such carts is easy to form but extremely difficult to manually maneuver due to the weight of the carts and the limited turning radius of the string of carts. Recently, power-operated vehicles have been used to collect and convey the carts. Such power-operated vehicles include U.S. Pat. No. 5,082,074 to Fischer and U.S. Pat. No. 5,439,069 to Beeler.
Existing power-operated vehicles have many shortcomings. Such vehicles are difficult to maneuver and control because they have a limited turning radius, such that the nested carts are not able to be maneuvered around sharp corners. However, turning the carts at too high of an angle may damage the front wheels. In addition, many of the existing power-operated vehicles push the carts from the rear. This presents additional maneuverability problems, and safety concerns. Pushing a string of carts down a slope runs the dangerous risk of the carts unnesting under their own weight. Also, when pushing a long string of nested carts, the operator is unable to see the path that is directly in front of the first cart. The longer the line of carts, the greater that this blind spot becomes. This presents significant safety problems, particularly in an airport where there are many people moving through congested areas. In order for the operator to safely maneuver the long string of carts, the operator should be at the front of the carts so that he or she may see the path that the carts are taking, and watch out for any pedestrians or other obstacles.
Another disadvantage associated with existing cart conveyers is that the nested carts are difficult to reload into the cart collection area. The nested line of carts must be precisely guided into the cart collection area, which is difficult when pushing from behind. Often, one must release the nested carts and manually maneuver each individual cart into the collection area.
Therefore, a need exists for an apparatus for conveying nestable carts that is highly maneuverable, easy to reload, and safe.